Indications of lacking planning efficacy - 7/7: "No proper progress routine installed"

The concluding article in my series on recognizing opportunities to improve your project planning. When a project is started, there is a lot of focus on planning. Every project team member remembers discussions on milestones and deadlines. Once started most of the time the progress-routine consists of a 5-minute agenda item 'status'. In this article I'll show why a proper progress-routine is indispensable in a serious project organization.

The critical path of a project (the longest sequence of activities in a project plan e.q. the minimal project duration) is continuously in motion. For example if an activity takes more or less time than anticipated, more or less resources are assigned or the scope of a project changes. As explained in previous articles, the duration of activities depend on multiple factors. All together the critical path does change and the only way to stay on top is to analyze it routinely.

A major reason why projects delay is a lacking progress routine: if you do not know the critical path, you can't manage it. If you can't manage it, the project end date is no more than a floating guess. Every setback will directly lead to a delay whereas opportunities are missed.

In order to manage the critical path, every team member should be made aware of the current critical path on a (bi)-weekly routine. In order to do this, the status of the assigned work should be requested for the past and the upcoming weeks. All information should be processed in a network schedule and than the analysis for the upcoming critical path should be made. Hopefully it's clear that a 5-minutes status round during a team meeting is inadequate to have a proper view on the critical path.

When a proper progress routine is installed, the critical path is clear prior to the team meeting so during that meeting it's possible to discuss the path and the possibilities to even shorten it. So a proper progress routine not only prevents delays, but also gives opportunities to speed-up the project.

We can help out building the network schedule and installing a progress cycle. The routine won't take much time of your team members, but will help you to have a successful project.

FloatControl is specialized in planning/project management for biotech & small pharma. For assistance send an e-mail to [email protected] or call +31 (0)6 8344 7080